Had a very brief session with DJ last night, hopefully put some more time in in the next couple of days. Also Dave popped back up on Uplay so hopefully get three of us on.

Anyhow firing it up set an itch I needed scratching, so a decided to try and complete the new Sam Fisher mission chain they have added. Man that was hard. You can only play the mission after 9pm game-time, which I initially was frustrated by as there is no way to manually advance time in-game - thankfully I found that if you fast travel around the map, you effectively DO advance time, so that's what I did to get past 9pm.

Then you have to infiltrate a UNIDAD base to meet with Fisher (and yes, Michael Ironside is voicing him which was a massive plus for me). UNIDAD in-game are basically a very heavily armed paramilitary organisation, far more dangerous than the rank and file Sicario gangs you can meet, and the more you fight them the higher their anger with you gets, GTA-cops style. Also your infiltration must not involve any kills whatsoever. I have never infiltrated anywhere in GR:W without at least a few tactical takedowns to clear the path.

Spoilered the next section, in case anyone wants to discover it for themselves:

So you meet with Fisher in the middle of the base, who says he is going to hack their systems and all hell is going to break loose, which is where I come in. Here I had to turn my difficulty settings down - I play on Extreme difficulty as that makes the game properly challenging, but you get swarmed and worst of all if you are killed, back to the start you go - infiltrate the base all over again. As well as having a small army of Unidad troops to take care of, UNIDAD also sends in Apache attach helos to ruin your day, and if you shoot them down they send more. Plus all the things you would usually clear down as standard before entering a base are in place due to your non-lethal infiltration - all the sniper towers, manned gun emplacements, mortars etc.

This makes the third section - exfiltration - massively hard. I managed to clear the ground troops (not on my first attempt) and make my way outside the building I had made my stand in. I was playing on my top level character with loads of perks won - damage to vehicles I shoot at, lower damage to vehicles I am using etc. Having an Apache batter you with missiles though, those perks don't add up to much. I had my favourite LMG equipped, and had to make my way out downing as many Apaches as I could with it. I managed to reach a helo, but on jumping in was immediately blown up by en enemy helo. I was really lucky as I was blown clear, usually if you die in a vehicle there is no option for co-op players or your AI team-mates to revive you. I got revived. Shot down another couple of enemy helos as I made my way to another, heavier helo in the base to steal, which I managed to get off the ground with. Unfortunately, I had not realised there was a SAM site within the base too which I had not taken out - I made it a couple of hundred yards from the base before my helo was shot down by it.

By some fluke though, I had managed to get out of the base between enemy helo wave, and although I got downed I had managed to escape the UNIDAD patrols. Also as I was in a heavy-duty helo (and had barely gotten airborne), while the missiles had downed me I was able to get clear on the ground before it exploded. I used my vehicle spawning options to get me another helo, although it spawned quite a way off. Made my way to it, and flew very carefully to the exfil site where I got a nice closing cutscene.

Mission rewards are mostly supplies won at each step, but complete the set and you get a Splinter Cell outfit (not fussed, while it is quite cool I want to look like a Ghost, and Sam Fisher's duds don't cut it. You do though also get his thermal vision goggles which can be equipped, and which your character will wear up on their forehead until you equip night or thermal vision at which point they pull them down into place. That is very cool, and something I have wishes they would do for a while a la ARMA. OK I am easily pleased, but this is only a little freebie and the mission was bastard hard, so I feel I earned it!

So a nice session with DJ and Prey, a fair few missions run and a lot of fun had.

DJ may have seen less to the game than Dave and I are so vocal about, but we have both level capped and activated the tier difficulty which increases number, accuracy and damage output of enemies, and they can take you out in a heartbeat if you aren't careful. I was not careful today - I had one of those sessions where every key sniper shot missed and alerted the enemy.

We also ran the Predator in-game mission which is a blast and hugely atmospheric.

Still - fun was had, and we put in a fair bit of time.

Some pics from today:

Sunrise over Bolivia

Flying into our next mission by night

Dave, posing in a body-strewn basement-come-mortuary-come-torture chamber, by my recently created bullet-smiley

Thanks to Dave and Ian for showing me round over the weekend, I had fun. Overall though I'm not sure whether it is really for me, it's pretty good fun co-op, when Ian isn't disappearing. , but I don't think I would get any enjoyment out of it solo. Right now Vermintide 2 is my go-to co-op game so I'm not sure I have time for another one.

Also I know you won't believe it, but that bug where I kept disappearing and showing as being miles away from you when I was actually right there with you only happened when you joined us DJ - both days too! I have never had that happen before and it only happened when you were with us.

Stumbled last night onto the Predator mission after bailing out of a flaming plane due to an unfortunate SAM incident.

Fun change of pace after a more traditional stealth based approach to things. There was a nice moment where there is basically just a sound effect of the beast running alongside you to what was our left... frantic undergrowth shredding (panic) fire followed.